Combining the whimsical charm of a simple story with some of the most gorgeous retro artwork we’ve seen since Sword & Sworcery, Finding Teddy is a digital Alice in Wonderland on your iPhone.

Playing like a point-and-tap adventure, inventory management, an inquisitive nature and your imagination will be your tools as you interact with the strange world you’ve been transported to in search of your missing teddy. Three chapters worth of story, along with side quests and plenty of puzzles will keep you occupied, though not for as long as we would have liked — this is a rich world begging for more content.

For curious players who don’t mind stopping to admire the artwork, Finding Teddy is a low-stress, high-reward kind of game that’s well worth experiencing.

Like many endless runners, Relic Rush is a one-touch affair. But unlike many of its peers, your one touch actually stops the character in this Donkey Kong revival.

Each level is automatically traversed, but you must use your ability to pause the character’s motion to avoid traps, obstacles, enemies and other damaging impediments. Timing everything perfectly becomes tricky as you progress through more than 100 levels in five different environments.

Uncomplicated, Relic Rush aims to be a perfect game to pick up and play for a few quick minutes on the go — and it succeeds.

If you’re like me, you might not consider artwork restoration to be particularly exciting. Luckily, Gavina Games has developed Puzzle Restorer, which proves that in the game world, it can be an extremely engrossing pursuit!

Working as assistant to Victor Ninot, your job is to use a limited number of paint blocks and brush strokes to successfully restore various pieces of damaged artwork. These paintings range from the abstract to the familiar, all rendered in an amusing 8-bit fashion. The game’s simple setup belies its deeper complexities, as you’ll uncover special paint mixing subtleties, story elements, and even secret paintings!

There’s a lot to love about Puzzle Restorer, and the fact that such a unique concept has been brought to life in the form of such a wonderfully addictive game is just another example of how inspiring iOS can be as a platform for interactive media.

I feel I should begin this review by mentioning that it’s never okay to kick your cat, or any other pet. Except maybe pet peeves, but I digress … Hackycat is a game about kicking cats to keep them from falling to the ground and exploding.

Once you pick an athlete, you’ll tap to kick, headbutt or knee cats to keep them in the air. Meanwhile, you’ll also be on the lookout for “cheezburgers” that unlock different cats, different characters and even different arenas for you to play with. Power-ups and combos make an appearance and help you grab some high scores, and a variety of goals exist to help you level up your athlete.

The usual assortment of Game Centre achievements and leaderboards are built in, and the app’s universal status means you can play it on whatever iOS device you happen to have handy. And you’ll want to, because this is a hilarious game.

We’ll wrap this up old-school with PixelVillage. Not unlike a typical resource management and building game, you’ll be responsible for creating a village — but there’s much more than that on offer in this unique mash-up.

While you do indeed gather resources and unlock new structures to develop your village, there’s also a seven-act storyline you’ll progress through in PixelVillage, and because this is a hostile land, you also need to fight encroaching enemies by building defensive structures. Somewhere in this mix of RTS, construction and tower defense, you’ll be keeping busy for a long time.

Ambitious, diverse and surprisingly deep, PixelVillage is a throwback to older game design aesthetics, but it makes for a worthy addition to your games folder and we highly recommend it.